Detergent is what you use on your clothes to clean them. But residues can be left behind to get absorbed into your skin. Is there harmful chemical chemicals in detergent that gets absorbed into our skin?
Laundry detergent does have harmful chemicals in it. Fragrance and the artificial smell in these products, acts as an endocrine disruptor in our bodies. There may be other chemicals, such as 1, 4 dioxane, which is a byproduct of the manufacturing process that causes cancer.
Companies will tell you that they remove all the byproducts from their products such as 1, 4 dioxane, but I will show you below that there was a study on multiple different detergents that still had significant levels of 1, 4 dioxane in them.
Are ingredients in laundry detergent harmful?
Let’s take a look at a popular laundry detergent Tide Liquid Laundry Detergent, Original.
This product’s score is an F on EWG and it is the worst score that you could possibly get.
The most concerning thing in the ingredient concerns moderate health concern for developmental and reproductive toxicity.
Also, there is no data for cancer as a health concern in this product. But that only means that the product was not tested to see if it causes cancer.
There are ingredients in this product that could still be linked to cancer. Just because there is no data for the health concern of cancer in this product. Does that mean this product may or may not cause cancer.
With the rating for the individual ingredients in this product, there are some F’s, quite a few D’s and C’s, and then some B’s and a few A’s.
Action steps for alternative products
ECOS Hypoallergenic Laundry Detergent With Enzymes, Lavender has a rating of B on EWG.org.
Almost all of the health concerns are low, and the majority of the ingredients are rated a B or an A with a few C’s.
There’s one D rating and that is the ingredient fragrance. Although, it says right on the label that there are no synthetic fragrances so it is actually an essential oil and not a fragrance.
This fact should change the overall rating of the product if you take it into account.
Conclusion
A lot of laundry detergent will have ingredients that may be contaminated with 1, 4 dioxane.
Although laundry detergent is only used on your clothing, you wear it throughout the day.
During this time the residue of chemicals in laundry detergent that was left behind is able to get onto your skin.
How much chemicals can we absorb through our skin? It turns out to be a lot.
A study published in the American Journal of Public Health looked into the skin’s absorption rates of chemicals found in drinking water. It showed that the skin absorbed an average of 64% of total contaminant dosage.1 Other studies found the face to be several times more permeable than broad body surfaces and an absorption rate of 100% for underarms and genitalia.2 And another peer-reviewed study showed 100% absorption for fragrance ingredients.3
https://www.downtoearth.org/articles/health-tips/667/your-skin-it-absorbs
Choose alternative products without harmful ingredients.